A Semester in Lausanne

Dave and I are going to Lausanne as visiting researchers at EPFL from September 2005 to January 2006. This blog documents our (mis) adventures...!

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Week 9 (Oct 29 to Nov 4)

On Friday, nidhi had the brilliant idea to go for a bike ride out into the country side. (There's an organization that lets you rent bikes for free in the summer with deposit). It was the two of us, Fred, Helena and her friend Mathilde, and Sara. All of us but fred rented bikes (they all came with anti-racism messages on the bikes).

We started out in ouchy, biked through Pully and Lutry, then headed up into the vineyards and came back down to go through vevey and montreux, and then our final destination: Chateau Chillon. All in all, it was 62km round trip.

Starting out at Ouchy:

Up into the vineyards

Along the highway:

We took a tour of the chateau which is much bigger than it appears. Here's Nidhi, just hangin around...

Inside the chateau:

By the end of the ride, Nidhi was almost dead: knees aching, back tired. Blah, it was hell.

That week was nothing exciting until....

Dadimama and Bua arrived in Lausanne!! They arrived Thursday morning, we had tea together, and Nidhi went to work while the two of them wandered around ouchy. After work, we had dinner together. The next day Nidhi, Dadimama, and Bua went bright and early to Mont Blanc. We took a train up to the Mer de Glace (sea of ice) from Chamonix (the closest town). At the top they had a little flora-and-fauna display in a teeny hut.